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David …all »Flynn has posted original and ground-breaking research of ancient mysteries, “illuminated” fraternities, gnosticism, crop circles, UFOs, and Bible prophecy on his famous Watcher Website since 1993. His debuted his book “Cydonia, The Secret Chronicles of Mars” at Ancient of Days 2003, drawing the praise of extra-terrestrial archeologist Richard C. Hoagland and PhD theologian Michael S Heiser. His 2003 & 2004 lectures are the most requested of all Ancient of Days talks, as he continues to amaze researchers and audiences of all backgrounds

That governments have permitted terrorist acts against their own people, and have even themselves been perpetrators in order to find strategic advantage is quite likely true, but this is the United States we’re talking about.

That intelligence agencies, financiers, terrorists and narco-criminals have a long history together is well established, but the Nugan Hand Bank, BCCI, Banco Ambrosiano, the P2 Lodge, the CIA/Mafia anti-Castro/Kennedy alliance, Iran/Contra and the rest were a long time ago, so there’s no need to rehash all that. That was then, this is now!

That Jonathan Bush’s Riggs Bank has been found guilty of laundering terrorist funds and fined a US-record $25 million must embarrass his nephew George, but it’s still no justification for leaping to paranoid conclusions.

That George Bush’s brother Marvin sat on the board of the Kuwaiti-owned company which provided electronic security to the World Trade Centre, Dulles Airport and United Airlines means nothing more than you must admit those Bush boys have done alright for themselves.

That George Bush found success as a businessman only after the investment of Osama’s brother Salem and reputed al Qaeda financier Khalid bin Mahfouz is just one of those things – one of those crazy things.

That Osama bin Laden is known to have been an asset of US foreign policy in no way implies he still is.

That al Qaeda was active in the Balkan conflict, fighting on the same side as the US as recently as 1999, while the US protected its cells, is merely one of history’s little aberrations.

The claims of Michael Springman, State Department veteran of the Jeddah visa bureau, that the CIA ran the office and issued visas to al Qaeda members so they could receive training in the United States, sound like the sour grapes of someone who was fired for making such wild accusations.

That one of George Bush’s first acts as President, in January 2001, was to end the two-year deployment of attack submarines which were positioned within striking distance of al Qaeda’s Afghanistan camps, even as the group’s guilt for the Cole bombing was established, proves that a transition from one administration to the next is never an easy task.

That so many influential figures in and close to the Bush White House had expressed, just a year before the attacks, the need for a “new Pearl Harbor” before their militarist ambitions could be fulfilled, demonstrates nothing more than the accidental virtue of being in the right place at the right time.

That the company PTECH, founded by a Saudi financier placed on America’s Terrorist Watch List in October 2001, had access to the FAA’s entire computer system for two years before the 9/11 attack, means he must not have been such a threat after all.

That whistleblower Indira Singh was told to keep her mouth shut and forget what she learned when she took her concerns about PTECH to her employers and federal authorities, suggests she lacked the big picture. And that the Chief Auditor for JP Morgan Chase told Singh repeatedly, as she answered questions about who supplied her with what information, that “that person should be killed,” suggests he should take an anger management seminar.

That on May 8, 2001, Dick Cheney took upon himself the job of co-ordinating a response to domestic terror attacks even as he was crafting the administration’s energy policy which bore implications for America’s military, circumventing the established infrastructure and ignoring the recommendations of the Hart-Rudman report, merely shows the VP to be someone who finds it hard to delegate.

That the standing order which covered the shooting down of hijacked aircraft was altered on June 1, 2001, taking discretion away from field commanders and placing it solely in the hands of the Secretary of Defense, is simply poor planning and unfortunate timing. Fortunately the error has been corrected, as the order was rescinded shortly after 9/11.

That in the weeks before 9/11, FBI agent Colleen Rowley found her investigation of Zacarias Moussaoui so perversely thwarted that her colleagues joked that bin Laden had a mole at the FBI, proves the stress-relieving virtue of humour in the workplace.

That Dave Frasca of the FBI’s Radical Fundamentalist Unit received a promotion after quashing multiple, urgent requests for investigations into al Qaeda assets training at flight schools in the summer of 2001 does appear on the surface odd, but undoubtedly there’s a good reason for it, quite possibly classified.

That FBI informant Randy Glass, working an undercover sting, was told by Pakistani intelligence operatives that the World Trade Center towers were coming down, and that his repeated warnings which continued until weeks before the attacks, including the mention of planes used as weapons, were ignored by federal authorities, is simply one of the many “What Ifs” of that tragic day.

That over the summer of 2001 Washington received many urgent, senior-level warnings from foreign intelligence agencies and governments – including those of Germany, France, Great Britain, Russia, Egypt, Israel, Morocco, Afghanistan and others – of impending terror attacks using hijacked aircraft and did nothing, demonstrates the pressing need for a new Intelligence Czar.

That John Ashcroft stopped flying commercial aircraft in July 2001 on account of security considerations had nothing to do with warnings regarding September 11, because he said so to the 9/11 Commission.

That former lead counsel for the House David Schippers says he’d taken to John Ashcroft’s office specific warnings he’d learned from FBI agents in New York of an impending attack – even naming the proposed dates, names of the hijackers and the targets – and that the investigations had been stymied and the agents threatened, proves nothing but David Schipper’s pathetic need for attention.

That Garth Nicolson received two warnings from contacts in the intelligence community and one from a North African head of state, which included specific site, date and source of the attacks, and passed the information to the Defense Department and the National Security Council to evidently no effect, clearly amounts to nothing, since virtually nobody has ever heard of him.

That in the months prior to September 11, self-described US intelligence operative Delmart Vreeland sought, from a Toronto jail cell, to get US and Canadian authorities to heed his warning of his accidental discovery of impending catastrophic attacks is worthless, since Vreeland was a dubious character, notwithstanding the fact that many of his claims have since been proven true.

That FBI Special Investigator Robert Wright claims that agents assigned to intelligence operations actually protect terrorists from investigation and prosecution, that the FBI shut down his probe into terrorist training camps, and that he was removed from a money-laundering case that had a direct link to terrorism, sounds like yet more sour grapes from a disgruntled employee.

That George Bush had plans to invade Afghanistan on his desk before 9/11 demonstrates only the value of being prepared.

The suggestion that securing a pipeline across Afghanistan figured into the White House’s calculations is as ludicrous as the assertion that oil played a part in determining war in Iraq.

That Afghanistan is once again the world’s principal heroin producer is an unfortunate reality, but to claim the CIA is still actively involved in the narcotics trade is to presume bad faith on the part of the agency.

Mahmood Ahmed, chief of Pakistan’s ISI, must not have authorized an al Qaeda payment of $100,000 to Mohammed Atta days before the attacks, and was not meeting with senior Washington officials over the week of 9/11, because I didn’t read anything about him in the official report.

That Porter Goss met with Ahmed the morning of September 11 in his capacity as Chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence has no bearing whatsoever upon his recent selection by the White House to head the Central Intelligence Agency.

That Goss’s congressional seat encompasses the 9/11 hijackers’ Florida base of operation, including their flight schools, is precisely the kind of meaningless factoid a conspiracy theorist would bring up.

It’s true that George HW Bush and Dick Cheney spent the evening of September 10 alone in the Oval Office, but what’s wrong with old colleagues catching up? And it’s true that George HW Bush and Shafig bin Laden, Osama’s brother, spent the morning of September 11 together at a board meeting of the Carlyle Group, but the bin Ladens are a big family.

That FEMA arrived in New York on Sept 10 to prepare for a scheduled biowarfare drill, and had a triage centre ready to go that was larger and better equipped than the one that was lost in the collapse of WTC 7, was a lucky twist of fate.

Newsweek’s report that senior Pentagon officials cancelled flights on Sept 10 for the following day on account of security concerns is only newsworthy because of what happened the following morning.

That George Bush’s telephone logs for September 11 do not exist should surprise no one, given the confusion of the day.

That Mohamed Atta attended the International Officer’s School at Maxwell Air Force Base, that Abdulaziz Alomari attended Brooks Air Force Base Aerospace Medical School, that Saeed Alghamdi attended the Defense Language Institute in Monterey merely shows it is a small world, after all.

That Lt Col Steve Butler, Vice Chancellor for student affairs of the Defense Language Institute during Alghamdi’s terms, was disciplined, removed from his post and threatened with court martial when he wrote “Bush knew of the impending attacks on America. He did nothing to warn the American people because he needed this war on terrorism. What is…contemptible is the President of the United States not telling the American people what he knows for political gain,” is the least that should have happened for such disrespect shown his Commander in Chief.

That Mohammed Atta dressed like a Mafioso, had a stripper girlfriend, smuggled drugs, was already a licensed pilot when he entered the US, enjoyed pork chops, drank to excess and did cocaine, was closer to Europeans than Arabs in Florida, and included the names of defence contractors on his email list, proves how dangerous the radical fundamentalist Muslim can be.

That 43 lbs of heroin was found on board the Lear Jet owned by Wally Hilliard, the owner of Atta’s flight school, just three weeks after Atta enrolled – the biggest seizure ever in Central Florida – was just bad luck. That Hilliard was not charged shows how specious the claims for conspiracy truly are.

That Hilliard’s plane had made 30-round trips to Venezuela with the same passengers who always paid cash, that the plane had been supplied by a pair of drug smugglers who had also outfitted CIA drug runner Barry Seal, and that 9/11 commissioner Richard ben-Veniste had been Seal’s attorney before Seal’s murder, shows nothing but the lengths to which conspiracists will go to draw sinister conclusions.

Reports of insider trading on 9/11 are false, because the SEC investigated and found only respectable investors who will remain nameless involved, and no terrorists, so the windfall profit-taking was merely, as ever, coincidental.

That heightened security for the World Trade Centre was lifted immediately prior to the attacks illustrates that it always happens when you least expect it.

That Hani Hanjour, the pilot of Flight 77, was so incompetent he could not fly a Cessna in August, but in September managed to fly a 767 at excessive speed into a spiraling, 270-degree descent and a level impact of the first floor of the Pentagon, on the only side that was virtually empty and had been hardened to withstand a terrorist attack, merely demonstrates that people can do almost anything once they set their minds to it.

That none of the flight data recorders were said to be recoverable even though they were located in the tail sections, and that until 9/11, no solid-state recorder in a catastrophic crash had been unrecoverable, shows how there’s a first time for everything.

That Mohammed Atta left a uniform, a will, a Koran, his driver’s license and a “how to fly planes” video in his rental car at the airport means he had other things on his mind.

The mention of Israelis with links to military-intelligence having been arrested on Sept 11 videotaping and celebrating the attacks, of an Israeli espionage ring surveiling DEA and defense installations and trailing the hijackers, and of a warning of impending attacks delivered to the Israeli company Odigo two hours before the first plane hit, does not deserve a response. That the stories also appeared in publications such as Ha’aretz and Forward is a sad display of self-hatred among certain elements of the Israeli media.

That multiple military wargames and simulations were underway the morning of 9/11 – one simulating the crash of a plane into a building; another, a live-fly simulation of multiple hijackings – and took many interceptors away from the eastern seaboard and confused field commanders as to which was a real hijacked aircraft and which was a hoax, was a bizarre coincidence, but no less a coincidence.

That the National Military Command Center ops director asked a rookie substitute to stand his watch at 8:30 am on Sept. 11 is nothing more than bad timing.

That a recording made Sept 11 of air traffic controllers’ describing what they had witnessed, was destroyed by an FAA official who crushed it in his hand, cut the tape into little pieces and dropped them in different trash cans around the building, is something no doubt that overzealous official wishes he could undo.

That the FBI knew precisely which Florida flight schools to descend upon hours after the attacks should make every American feel safer knowing their federal agents are on the ball.

That a former flight school executive believes the hijackers were “double agents,” and says about Atta and associates, “Early on I gleaned that these guys had government protection. They were let into this country for a specific purpose,” and was visited by the FBI just four hours after the attacks to intimidate him into silence, proves he’s an unreliable witness, for the simple reason there is no conspiracy.

That Jeb Bush was on board an aircraft that removed flight school records to Washington in the middle of the night on Sept 12th demonstrates how seriously the governor takes the issue of national security.

To insinuate evil motive from the mercy flights of bin Laden family members and Saudi royals after 9/11 shows the sickness of the conspiratorial mindset.

Le Figaro’s report in October 2001, known to have originated with French intelligence, that the CIA met Osama bin Laden in a Dubai hospital in July 2001, proves again the perfidy of the French.

That the tape in which bin Laden claims responsibility for the attacks was released by the State Department after having been found providentially by US forces in Afghanistan, and depicts a fattened Osama with a broader face and a flatter nose, proves Osama, and Osama alone, masterminded 9/11.

That at the battle of Tora Bora, where bin Laden was surrounded on three sides, Special Forces received no order to advance and capture him and were forced to stand and watch as two Russian-made helicopters flew into the area where bin Laden was believed hiding, loaded up passengers and returned to Pakistan, demonstrates how confusing the modern battlefield can be.

That upon returning to Fort Bragg from Tora Bora, the same Special Operations troops who had been stood down from capturing bin Laden, suffered a unusual spree of murder/suicides, is nothing more than a series of senseless tragedies.

Reports that bin Laden is currently receiving periodic dialysis treatment in a Pakistani medical hospital are simply too incredible to be true.

That the White House went on Cipro September 11 shows the foresightedness of America’s emergency response.

That the anthrax was mailed to perceived liberal media and the Democratic leadership demonstrates only the perversity of the terrorist psyche.

That the anthrax attacks appeared to silence opponents of the Patriot Act shows only that appearances can be deceiving.

That the Ames-strain anthrax was found to have originated at Fort Detrick, and was beyond the capability of all but a few labs to refine, underscores the importance of allowing the investigation to continue without the distraction of absurd conspiracy theories.

That Republican guru Grover Norquist has been found to have aided financiers and supporters of Islamic terror to gain access to the Bush White House, and is a founder of the Islamic Institute, which the Treasury Department believes to be a source of funding for al Qaeda, suggests Norquist is at worst, naive, and at best, needs a wider circle of friends.

That the Department of Justice consistently chooses to see accused 9/11 plotters go free rather than permit the courtroom testimony of al Qaeda leaders in American custody looks bad, but only because we don’t have all the facts.

That the White House balked at any inquiry into the events of 9/11, then starved it of funds and stonewalled it, was unfortunate, but since the commission didn’t find for conspiracy it’s all a non issue anyway.

That the 9/11 commission’s executive director and “gatekeeper,” Philip Zelikow, was so closely involved in the events under investigation that he testified before the the commission as part of the inquiry, shows only an apparent conflict of interest.

That commission chair Thomas Kean is, like George Bush, a Texas oil executive who had business dealings with reputed al Qaeda financier Khalid bin Mafouz, suggests Texas is smaller than they say it is.

That co-chair Lee Hamilton has a history as a Bush family “fixer,” including clearing Bush Sr of the claims arising from the 1980 “October Surprise”, is of no concern, since only conspiracists believe there was such a thing as an October Surprise.

That FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds accuses the agency of intentionally fudging specific pre-9/11 warnings and harboring a foreign espionage ring in its translation department, and claims she witnessed evidence of the semi-official infrastructure of money-laundering and narcotics trade behind the attacks, is of no account, since John Ashcroft has gagged her with the rare invocation of “State Secrets Privilege,” and retroactively classified her public testimony. For the sake of national security, let us speak no more of her.

That, when commenting on Edmond’s case, Daniel Ellsberg remarked that Ashcroft could go to prison for his part in a cover-up, suggests Ellsberg is giving comfort to the terrorists, and could, if he doesn’t wise up, find himself declared an enemy combatant.

I could go on. And on and on. But I trust you get the point. Which is simply this: there are no secrets, an American government would never accept civilian casualties for geostrategic gain, and conspiracies are for the weak-minded and gullible.

” Doing the math, that means as of today—– over the past 5 years, while millions of mostly white and middle to upper class human beings with internet connections engaged in arguments about the minute details of a terrorist attack that occured in the United States on September 11th, over 60 million children have died. Because of starvation. I had breakfast today, how about you?”

Can you imagine working for a company that has a little more than 500 employees and has the following statistics:

– 29 have been accused of spousal abuse
– 7 have been arrested for fraud
– 19 have been accused of writing bad checks
– 117 have directly or indirectly bankrupted at least 2 businesses
– 3 have done time for assault
– 71 cannot get a credit card due to bad credit
– 14 have been arrested on drug-related charges
– 8 have been arrested for shoplifting
– 21 are currently defendants in lawsuits
– 84 have been arrested for drunk driving in the last year

This is the best guide I can offer for proactive, prolonged, independent and effective resistance against the overwhelming direction towards greater warfare, poverty, and fascist control we see around the world in 2007.

I was asked by a weirdo I have a lot of respect for to write on this specific subject. I want this article to be as useful as possible, so I’m just going to lay things on the table as quickly and as clearly as I can.

Let’s begin by shaking off bad language—we tend to discuss politics using old metaphors, which are useless today and actually make understanding the problem more difficult. There is no Left and Right, there is no “inside the system” because none of us are “outside” of it, there is no change “from the bottom up” because there is no “top” to bring the change to.

We find ourselves up against an entrenched power structure composed of a relatively very small group of wealthy elites. They seldom rule directly or even visibly, and maintain their power through building huge armed bureacracies who enforce power for them. The global power structure is a decentralized, constantly shifting network of organized crime and national control systems, representing many different races, nationalities, religious dogmas and cultures.

However, there are common threads in all systems of social control: They do not have a sense of humor, they are bitterly opposed to Art, and they are unable to handle bizarre and confusing situations. These systems are built upon enforcing conformity, turning nature into consumer goods, and controlling information. These systems require enemies and they create criminals.

Because of these common threads, these systems all have common weakness that we have the power to exploit to incredible effect. If you take nothing else away from this, please remember: you are exponentially more powerful than you think you are.

The simplest summation of the overall strategy I propose is this:

1. Destabilize Existing Structure

2. Minimize Destructive Backlash

3. Establish Robust Communication

To this end, I propose 10 steps which form a conceptual toolkit. Perhaps that’s a euphemism for “disorganized pile of shit,” but I feel strongly that these are all relevant and useful:

1. Practice is repetition is preparation is power.

Can you win a fight? Can you control a situation enough to escape? Can you outrun police? I’m not saying you need to be able to knock someone out like Brad Pitt, but am saying self-defense is a core life skill. Without it, you’re not effective. I recommend Aikido and Tai Chi to all living humans, unconditionally.

Establish meaningful and beneficial routines. Our culture is a constant pulse of imposed rhythms and rituals that we need to actively fight against to maintain clarity and effectiveness. Learning any skill set is amazingly simple: learn about it, then try it out until you get it. That iron-clad formula will guide you through anything, from juggling to fellatio to meditation.

2. Create situations that cannot be controlled.

I don’t propose that because it’s punk rock, but because I believe it’s a solid strategy. Ideally, in any confrontation, you want control of the situation. However, we’re talking about us, you and me as individuals, taking on the global power structure of Earth in 2007 for control of our planet. We are not in control of the situation, it is dumb to assume we could be. So go for the next best thing—be totally unpredictable, escalate chaos and noise, and create a situation that nobody could possibly control.

This is basically an unspoken bet with your opponent: “I am giving up control of this situation because I am faster, smarter and stronger than you.” Get comfortable with the weird and unpredictable, and take comfort in statistics: when shit gets weird, you abort the operation. That’s the standard operating procedure for nearly any organization what will be sending people after you. Embrace chaos and leverage chaos, because what cannot be predicted cannot be controlled. Only a lawyer would pretend otherwise.

3. Do not allow yourself to be controlled by situations.

What do you do if someone puts a loaded gun in your face? Sure, that’s a heavy situation, but do you panic? I propose you remain calm and ask the human with the gun what they want. There is never any reason to panic. Self-assembling nanotech hunter-destroyer clusters swarming thousands of feet high, raining down human blood and internal organs, is still not a valid reason to panic. Panic is helpless idiot fear. In high stakes situations, you need to be calm and focused.

Horrible and amazing things will happen in the next five years, but you’re going to survive and maintain, just like humans always do. You yourself should make peace with death. I mean that honestly, not being sarcastic or macabre—it’s important for psychological health to keep your death in perspective. Avoiding it always leads to complications, and as I will discuss later, denial of death has been shown to make people more suggestible, afraid, and prone to violence.

4. Seek information, avoid arguments.

The only person responsible for getting you trustworthy information is you. This involves a great deal of work. Am I seriously advocating that you spend hours a day just sitting around learning stuff? Absolutely yes, I am. The wonderful Jennifer Bowen introduced me to the phrase “good company is kept discussing good ideas—not people.”

The internet is insanely effective for rapidly accessing high volumes of high quality information. It’s also a great way to spend four hours checking your email, watching porn, or getting into pointless arguments with total strangers. We all have egos, we all get pissed off occasionally, but don’t do that online: get up immediately and use that anger to lift some free weights.

5. Seek predictive models, avoid explanatory models.

I propose that it’s more important to have a general sense of what’s coming up next, than to have a precise picture of what’s going on now. The global power structure is not a monolithic, static object: it is constantly shifting, and while we focus on one tentacle, seven more will be taking advantage of our ignorance. An accurate history of this power structure is far less valuable than knowing how they operate, and what their assumptions are.

Remember, we’re living on the same planet. No amount of secret insider knowledge will spare you the consequences of catastrophic storms, toxic pollution, solar and lunar cycles, space weather radiation, etc. The global power structure has to respond and adapt to the world it claims to control, use the cycles of nature against them.

This is a massive source of power that few activists seem to be aware of: for the past three centuries, governments, militaries and corporations have been waging a very literal War Against Nature, attempting to control what they cannot understand. Recent documents like the UK Ministry of Defense report “Global Trends 2007-2036” make it clear that those in power cannot predict the short-term consequences of worldwide toxic pollution. They are scrambling to prepare for a future crisis they cannot plan for. You can, though.

6. Become an autonomous cell.

Do you realize that most of what “intelligence analysts” do is just read through publicly available media and look for patterns? Are you familiar with the concept, technique and theory behind “asymmetric warfare”? What do you think military analysts mean when they predict a future of “constant low-intensity urban conflict?” Is it signifigant that the US government has a long track record of inflitrating, subverting and murdering counter-culture icons and revolutionary leaders?

As Peter J. Carroll observed in Psybermagick: “In practice the power of any conspiracy rises and falls in inverse proportion to the power of its internal conspiracies. Mutual guilt and bribery mainly hold together conspiracies whose ideologies command insufficient loyalty, but this makes them vulnerable.” Take advantage of your opponents paranoia, use their need for control against them.

Autonomy also implies economic freedom, good health, and secure access to food. Shelter can of course be communal and improvised—in many climates, shelter is barely nescessary most of the year. Although I’m essentially advocating that we take the Army recruiting slogan, “an army of one,” further than they themselves ever will, I’m not avocating turning your back on anyone. I’m advocating that you work for your community, independently and perhaps invisibly.

7. Don’t be a dickhead, and love thy neighbor.

It’s the only rational approach to life: do your best to be nice. By doing so, you make life easier for those around you, you reduce physical stress that wears on your own body, and you will often find yourself reaping rewards at random. Some people call this “karma,” other folks call this “emergent properties of complex networks.”

Be nice to your neighbors. Help them out for no reason, refuse to accept money for doing so. Partly because real charity is subversive these days. Also, in 2007, you do not want the cops called on you, period. You truly do the world a favor when you purge yourself of terms like “sheeple” and “the herd”—I’ve also learned, through hilarious personal experience, that referring to taxpaying citizens as “slaves” will never work out for you.

There is nothing wrong with being selfish, only being dumb. Dumb selfish people look for simple self-benefit, smart selfish people look for open-ended, mutually beneficial situations. My personal rule of thumb is avoiding theory as much as I can and focusing on That Which Is Useful, but perhaps that’s not useful for you. If you can improve your community, you have also improved your personal power base and your chances for long-term success. That’s not “public service,” just science, math and common sense.

8. Invest in tools and share them subversively.

The old Industrial Revolution plan for social control was simple. Wealthy families owned all the “capitol goods”—the machines and factories that make consumer goods. So they used that power to hire poor people to work for them, in exchange for being able to purchase some of the “consumer goods” they themselves made. Things have changed a lot in 2007, because the line between captiol and consumer goods has blurred almost completely. You can launch a record label with about $5000 and be pressing your own CDs, for instance.

Technology is magick. I think that’s become clear enough to just leave that as a statement. We now have the tools for invisibility, weather control, human cloning and burning entire cities to the ground with a single missile. We will soon have the tools for universal translation, undoing one of Jehovah’s major curses as chronicled in Genesis 11. It’s vitally important that us fringe weirdos get ahold of all these amazing future toys before they get turned into future weapons against us.

Sharing is subversive. Communal access to important tools is subversive. Growth is a sign of a healthy economy, profit is a sign of a sick one. Break the profit cycle everywhere you can. Nobody will go pay for a service or tool when they can use an equally good one locally, for free. You would be amazed how low overhead can be when maintenance is your only expense. You would be amazed how well you can maintain tools and facilities if you’re willing to put in work.

9. Become a Beacon of Insane Hope

Yeah, perhaps I’m reaching with this one, but I mean it emphatically. There is no shortage of people telling me how fucked I am, but I’ve spent the better part of a year tracking down people who are talking about solutions, comparing technique, and putting in work towards something better. I want to talk to people about seed bombs, quantum microdots, urban farming, water purification, anything that can improve reality, here and now.

There’s strong evidence that fear and anger are actively used as tools of manipulation and social control: the White House spent $1.6 billion dollars in 2006 on “public relations.” This is a signal that needs to be counteracted, becacause based on psychology experiments, evoking the concept of death alters human perception. People become more dogmatic, nationalist and likely to support violence. This is based on the research of Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, and Tom Pyszczynski, and you can find more information searching for the phrase “Terror Management Theory.”

I am not advocating violence to any extent. Perhaps this is the strangest concept in my toolbag, but for what it’s worth: violence is actually not your weapon. Sure, you can throw rocks at cops, shoot cops, and blow up police stations, but you’re actually not accomplishing anything. In fact, you’re doing Their job for them, which is why undercover police officers around the world try to start riots at peaceful protests. Violence is not a weapon we can control, so it’s not a weapon we should use, either.

10. Please, be fearless.

The stakes are beautifully high, the enemy is unbelievably strong, the fight looks completely hopeless. It’s too perfect, it’s ridiculous. How can we be bored on a planet as deliciously dangerous and insane as Earth? I can only conclude that my entire generation is living inside an open-ended video game that we’ve been training for since birth without even realizing it.

Reacting to the stories of Tahiti, and troubled that the crew of HMS Bounty could have found life among the Tahitians preferable to life among Christians, the religious orthodoxy of England founded the London Missionary Society in 1795 (which included their own armed police force). The sole purpose of the society was to bring Tahiti under Christian rule, in effect to remove a more pleasant alternative lifestyle that threatened Christian power. Two years later the first missionaries arrived in Tahiti and were as warmly treated by the Tahitians as had been earlier visitors. But after 7 years of missionary work (children were required to recite, “For what is Jehova angry with thee? Because I am evil and do evil.” in Tahitian) there were few willing converts to Christianity.

What happened next is documented in a letter to home by one of the brethren, J.M.Orsmond. All the missionaries were at that time salting pork and distilling spirits. Pomare (the local chief) was introduced to the bottle by the missionaries. Orsmond describes the compact by which Pomare, reduced to an alcoholic, would be backed in a war against the other island chiefs on the understanding that his victory would be followed by enforced conversion (This is the same deal that Papal Nuncio Eugenio Pacelli made with Hitler, trading the Vatican’s support for Hitler’s promise to declare Catholocism Nazi Germany’s state religion).

Since Pomare was supplied with firearms to be used against his opponents’ clubs, victory was certain. “The whole nation”, Orsmond wrote, “was converted in a day.”

There followed a reign of terror. Persistent unbelievers were put to death and a penal code was drawn up by the missionaries and enforced by the mission police. it was declared illegal to adorn oneself with flowers, to sing (other than hymns), to surf or to dance. A moral code of such strictness was then enforced that a man walking with his arm round a woman at night was compelled to carry a lantern in his free hand. On the island of Raiatea a man who forecast the weather was treated as a witchdoctor and put to death.

Within a quarter of a century the process by which the native culture of Tahiti had been extinguished was exported to every corner of the Pacific, reducing the islanders to the level of the working class of Victorian England.

After their mass conversion it was hoped that the Tahitians might be induced to accept the benefits of civilization by putting them to [servile] work growing sugar cane… The enterprise failed, and Mr. Orsmond, believing that “a too bountiful nature diminishes men’s natural desire to work”, ordered all the breadfruit trees to be cut down so that the lack of a natural food supply would force the Tahitians to seek employment in the mission plantations.

Captain James Cook estimated that 200,000 people were living on Tahiti. After thirty years of missionary rule, only 6,000 remained.

Their power base firmly established in Tahiti, the missionaries moved swiftly to other islands. The methods employed were the same as before. A local chieftain would be baptized, crowned king, presented with a portrait of Queen Victoria, introduced to the bottle, and left to the work of conversion.